Harold Corsini Photographs

Description

Visual images from the 1940s-1970s show images taken by freelance photographer Corsini for local and national businesses, including US Steel, as well as images from WWII and Southeast Asia and East Africa.

The images selected for digitization best represent the creative and commercial content of Corsini's work as a professional photographer as well as an artist. The photographs were taken from the 1940s through the 1970s.

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The Harold Corsini Photograph Collection is comprised of approximately 55,000 images represented in print, negative, and slide format. The collection is held at the Archives Service Center within the University Library System.

About Harold Corsini

Born on August 28, 1919 in New York City, NY, Harold (Araldo) Raymond Corsini began a life of photography at the age of sixteen. His professional career began in the early 1940s, when he worked briefly for Life magazine. Corsini began working with Roy Stryker in 1943 when he joined Stryker on the Standard Oil Project. Through this project, Corsini visually documented the oil company's operations worldwide, including in the Pacific Theater and Saudi Arabia during World War II.

In 1950, Corsini and his wife, Mary, moved to Pittsburgh, PA to assist Stryker as head of the photographic department at the Pittsburgh Photographic Library (PPL). While working for the PPL, Corsini, along with other notable photographers such as Clyde Hare, Elliot Erwitt, and Esther Bubley, created a visual record of the city's first Renaissance which began in the 1940s under then Mayor David L. Lawrence. As a master printer, Corsini was in charge of the PPL darkroom.

After the PPL disbanded in 1960, Corsini began his own commercial photography business, producing ads for local companies as well as working with larger advertising firms. He captured photographs for US Steel (1960s-1970s) by chronicling many aspects of the steel industry, including industrial and technical pieces.

After Corsini retired from commercial photography in 1975, he spent nine years teaching photography and design at Carnegie Mellon University. Harold Corsini passed away on January 1, 2008. Museums around the world, including Carnegie Museum of Art, have displayed Corsini's photographs. His work with the Pittsburgh Photograph Library can be found at the Carnegie Public Library, Pennsylvania Department.